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"The savings were mainly calculated on the basis of the costs that are incurred today by having 27 national and different rules instead of one single rule," EU spokeswoman Mina Andreeva said in an email.

She pointed out that the commission's impact assessments have to pass an independent impact assessment board.

Hewlett Packard, an IT firm which employs over 320,000 people worldwide, agrees that the commission's push to create a more simple EU-wide law will save it money.

But some also express concerns that heavy-handed regulation will drive innovation away from Europe.

An insider at the Swedish-based mobile company Eriksson says compliance costs are not the most important issue when it comes to the long term implications of the new regulation.

Instead it is the potentially lengthy time-to-market path for new products.

Such delays will drive up costs and make companies in the EU move their innovation investment outside the European Union, said the Eriksson contact.

For their part, euro-deputies in the civil liberties committee, which is examining the proposal, have not questioned the commission’s figure.

But others - like the UK government, the French postal service and the pro-business American Chamber of Commerce in Brussels - have done so.

They argue the regulation will bring in additional expenses and not the savings touted by the commission.

Allain Barrault, national secretary of the Paris-based CFDT trade union, said in a one page letter addressed to the European Parliament in April that "the direct marketing sector would be losing €1.25 billion and 25,000 jobs."

The American Chamber of Commerce in its report released in March says the regulation could slash up to 1.3 percent off the EU's GDP and that EU services exports to the United States would drop by 6.7 percent due to loss of competitiveness.

The regulation, it says, would cost each household in the EU up to €3,500.

Meanwhile, the UK, which has opposed the EU’s regulation from the outset, says British industry stands to lose between £100 million (€118m) and £360 million (€425m) a year.

"The two [UK and commission] numbers don't agree. That needs an explanation,” says Amberhawk's Pounder.

Pounder, who analysed the UK report, says they stretched the figures over a 10-year period.

"I’m sure they stretched the numbers over 10 years because 10 times a small number is a big number,” he noted.

The parliament’s civil liberties committee is currently going through some 4,000 amendments on the heavily-lobbied bill before they put it to a vote in June or July.

The committee’s secretariat told this website that it was not aware of any other member state, aside from the UK, that has conducted an impact assessment report.

The EU draft regulation aims to make it easier for people to control their personal data.

But the UK government estimates the commission’s proposal would prompt more people to ask to access their data and so add an annual administrative expense of around £30 million to the industry.

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Opinion

The regulators have issued so many warnings to Google, and the issues raised are so integral to how Europeans view their fundamental human rights, that it is difficult to see how the EU regulators can back down.